RECAP: Water-Logged Twins Sawed Off by LeBlanc in 1-0 Loss to Mariners

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The Minnesota Twins returned home from a successful road trip for a strange one-off game against the Seattle Mariners. The game, which was a make-up for one that was snowed out on April 8, was delayed an hour and 42 minutes before it got underway.

From that point on, it was an unlikely pitcher’s duel between Twins righty Jake Odorizzi and Mariners lefty Wade LeBlanc. Neither side blinked until the Mariners opened the eighth inning with a double, and then a bunt was mishandled by Logan Morrison which led to the only run of the night scoring.

This left reliever Trevor Hildenberger with a hard-luck loss, and the Twins off to a tough start to the homestand with National League Central-leading St. Louis coming to town next.

Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:

Odorizzi’s night was “Double, Double and Toil” but no trouble

Odorizzi was very, very good on the night, but did allow leadoff doubles in the third, fifth and sixth innings. Each time, however, he was able to wriggle out of trouble.

“Jake did a nice job,” manager Paul Molitor said. “He pitched around a couple leadoff doubles and kept putting zeroes up there. Even after taking a shot (line drive off the bat of Kyle Seager), he was able to make pitches on that last hitter to keep it tied at the time.”

In the third inning, Ben Gamel roped a double off the top of the wall in deep right-center. Gordon Beckham — freshly added to the roster with the injury to Robinson Cano — struck out swinging, Dee Gordon grounded to short and Jean Segura grounded to Logan Morrison, who made a nifty play at first for the out.

In the fifth, Ryon Healy drilled a double to left. Mike Zunino followed by striking out, then Gamel walked, Beckham struck out swinging and Gordon popped to Ehire Adrianza, who made a fine running play to preserve the scoreless tie.

In the sixth, Segura led off with a double to deep right. Mitch Haniger flew out to left, Nelson Cruz was grazed by a pitch and Kyle Seager roped a liner off Odorizzi’s backside which deflected to Adrianza at short. Adrianza had trouble getting a handle on the ball at first, but recorded to beat Cruz to the bag — just barely — for the second out. After some warm-up tosses to make sure he was OK, Odorizzi rebounded to strike Healy out swinging.

All told, three of the four hits against Odorizzi went for extra bases, but each time he settled in and more often than not, used strikeouts to get outs when he needed them. Odorizzi had a stellar 15 swinging strikes on 97 pitches. According to Brooks Baseball, seven of them came on the four-seam fastball (11.7 percent), four came on the slider (22.2 percent), three came on the split (18.8 percent) and one came on the curve (18.8 percent).